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Paul Farmer giving MacLean Prize Lecture in 2017 by MacLean Center –

Top 10 Amazing Facts about Paul Farmer

Paul Farmer was a medical anthropologist and physician. Medical anthropology studies human health and disease, health care systems, and biocultural adaptation. It views humans from multidimensional and ecological perspectives.

Paul excelled in school. Both of his parents enjoyed reading serious literature to their children and encouraged them to take an interest in the wider world. He went ahead to get an MD and Ph.D. from Harvard University, where he was the chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He was the co-founder and chief strategist of Partners In Health (PIH), an international non-profit organization that since 1987 has provided direct health care services and undertaken research and advocacy activities on behalf of those who are sick and living in poverty. 

Let鈥檚 look at the top 10 amazing facts about Paul Farmer;

1. Paul won a full scholarship to Duke University

Paul Farmer speaks at IDEO by Global X from CDG –

Paul was elected president of his senior class at Hernando High in Brooksville and won a full scholarship to Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. At Duke, he explored a variety of science courses before concentrating on medical anthropology.

At Duke, Farmer discovered the writings of Rudolf Virchow, the 19th-century German physician, and scientist who founded cell theory and pioneered the practice of public health medicine. Virchow鈥檚 approach, which encompassed biology, anthropology, and politics, inspired the young Farmer. 

2. Farmer developed an interest in working in Haiti after interacting with Haitian people as a child

When money was short one summer, Farmer鈥檚 family picked citrus fruit alongside Haitian migrant workers. Farmer was fascinated by their stories and began to learn everything he could about Haiti, studying the Creole language, interviewing migrant workers, and reading scores of books about the island nation鈥檚 tragic history.

After graduating from Duke, Farmer traveled to Haiti, where he planned to spend a year working in public health clinics, mastering the Creole language, and learning more about the country, the poorest in the Western Hemisphere.

3. Paul juggled studying at Harvard and working in Haiti

Paul Farmer by Billigan –

Farmer completed a brief postgraduate fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh. He applied to Harvard Medical School, one of two institutions in the country to offer a joint-degree program in medicine and medical anthropology. In the meantime, he traveled to Haiti, where he would start working with the community.

While he was still in Haiti when he received word that he had been accepted at Harvard Medical School. He would simultaneously pursue a medical degree and a doctorate in medical anthropology. 

He returned to the United States to enroll but took his study materials back to Haiti. For the next three years, he would commute from Cange to Cambridge, returning to Harvard for exams and laboratory practice. The experience he was gaining treating the poor and sick in Haiti was more instructive than any classroom lecture. Despite his long absences, his grades were among the highest in his class.

4. Farmer and his colleagues opened Clinique Bon Saveur, a clinic in Cange, Haiti

In 1985, Farmer and his colleagues launched a two-room clinic in Cange. The following year, Haiti鈥檚 dictator, Fran莽ois Duvalier fled the country after facing a coup from the army. 

At the same time, health care workers in Cange identified the community鈥檚 first cases of AIDS. The disease was already pandemic in Haiti鈥檚 urban slums. In the midst of this turmoil, Farmer set out to form a permanent charitable foundation to fund his work in Haiti. He also opened the clinic to take in critically ill patients.

5. Paul鈥檚 two-room clinic in Haiti grew into a complete hospital

In only a few years, the one-room clinic moved to a complete hospital with a nursing school, operating rooms, satellite communications, and a blood bank.

It now serves a community of more than 150,000 people, trains and employs local personnel as community health workers, dispensing food, water, housing assistance, education, and other social services.

Paul鈥檚 innovative therapies were curing infectious diseases, such as tuberculosis, for a hundredth of the amount that treating the same disease would cost in a U.S. hospital.

6. Farmer was known as the man who would cure the world

Archbishop Emeritus Desmond M. Tutu and Paul Farmer, Founder, Partners in Health by Skoll Foundation

Farmer and his colleagues in the U.S. and abroad pioneered novel community-based treatment strategies that demonstrate the delivery of high-quality health care in resource-poor settings in the U.S. and abroad. 

He wrote extensively on health and human rights, the role of social inequalities in the distribution and outcome of infectious diseases, and global health. He was known as “the man who would cure the world”, as described in the book Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder. 

7. Paul shared his life鈥檚 work in a series of books

Paul wrote 12 books in his lifetime. Some of the books penned by Paul included AIDS and Accusation, The Uses of Haiti, Infections, and Inequalities, and Pathologies of Power. 

In the book, Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds: Ebola and the Ravages of History, Paul narrates his experience after he visited the Western African Ebola virus epidemic site in July 2014, and he devotes much of the book to his personal experiences. By Farmer’s account, the West Africa Ebola death toll rose from the longstanding failure to invest in basic health infrastructure which resulted in a lack of proper medical care. 

8. Farmer鈥檚 work attracted the support of philanthropists, including Bill and Melinda Gates

Bill and Melinda Gates during their visit to the Oslo Opera House in June 2009 by Kjetil Ree –

Farmer set out to form a permanent charitable foundation to fund his work in Haiti. With Ophelia Dahl and his former Duke classmate, Todd McCormack, Farmer founded Partners In Health (PIH) in Boston in 1987.

As Partners In Health has expanded its activities, Paul Farmer spent many of his days flying from country to country, monitoring new programs, and raising funds for Partners In Health. 

In 2002, PIH received a $13 million grant from the Global Fund for improvements in the Cange complex. In 2005 the William J. Clinton Foundation funded a Partners In Health AIDS program in Rwanda. 

Partners in Health has projects in Haiti, Lesotho, Malawi, Peru, Russia, Rwanda, and the United States, and supports other projects in Mexico and Guatemala. 

9. Paul Farmer was the recipient of numerous honors

Some of these awards included the Bronislaw Malinowski Award and the Margaret Mead Award from the Society for Applied Anthropology, the Outstanding International Physician Award from the American Medical Association, just to name a few.

In 2019, Paul Farmer was awarded Rwanda鈥檚 highest honor, the National Order of Outstanding Friendship by Rwandan President Paul Kagame. The medal, which has been granted to only nine individuals in the country鈥檚 history, is given to those who have exhibited extraordinary service to the people of Rwanda. 

10. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Farmer worked with PIH to develop a contact-tracing program in Massachusetts

In 2020, after an outbreak of COVID-19 and it becoming a global pandemic, Farmer and PIH were involved in various efforts regarding the viral illness, including creating a contact-tracing program in Massachusetts.

In that same year, Farmer received the $1 million Berggruen Prize, awarded annually, having been cited 鈥渇or transforming how we think about infectious diseases, social inequality, and caring for others while standing in solidarity with them.鈥�